So I just bailed out of the game because a spider was eating my face off.

He came galloping up to the mound over my mine (which I'm really no longer using) and jumped to my bridge and jumped on my face.

Earlier, there were two spiders in the daylight on my beach house, and they'd scaled it despite my overhangs. I think I need to better understand the range of spider jumps before I can feel safer about the canopy bridge....

A few updates ago, spiders would often spawn invisible, so you would hear their screeching and feel their attacks and not know what was going on. Bailing was the best and only defense.

My best story has to do with a creeper. Until they see you they are sort of dumb, often sitting in one place, scanning their surroundings. I was rushing through a cave lighting it up as best I could as I went, when I realized that I had just placed a torch at the feet of a creeper. I jumped back in my chair IRL and yelled shit while I desperately sought to put distance and height between the creeper and my avatar. I survived but the torch was never seen again.

I went back in and talked to you and then killed that first spider, but now there's another one out there somewhere so I went down into my bunker to be safe. I though that my bridge would keep spiders away, but on the Olde Towne end it's rather low.

Since I've internalized my access to the mine I plan on shaving the hill down and restoring it to its natural appearance and expanding/refining my little structure at the canopy walk into a more defensive residence while digging downward for more ores and such.

There was a group of five spiders outside my tiny west fort earlier. I had to just watch them, for a while. It was so eerie! But my best Minecraft story is this:

Yesterday, I was in my supposedly-secure base in Bridgeport when I saw the familiar small green top of a creeper over the corner of my crafting table. I just about had a heart attack! I jumped back so violently I snapped a plastic piece of my desk chair so there was a loud BANG! and I almost fell over. When I regained my composure from the BANG! and the creeper, I realized it was the small, newly green top of a duck. But damn, was I shaken.

No more Minecrafting alone in a dark room.

Other stories...in offline Minecraft, I built my shelter in a corner of an entrance to a massive cave...a nice spot, except it happened to be right next to a dungeon. So whenever I was in my secure shelter I heard the endless hissing of spiders, which sort of gets to you after a while.

I had a few false starts...my first ever night in Minecraft I made a shelter in the wall of a little valley. I thought that light kept the monsters away, rather than just keeping them from spawning. So I was quite shocked when a spider and a skeleton surprised me in my well-lit cave. I actually dispatched them both! But then I met my first creeper. Then I decided I should build a shelter in the side of a mountain, so they wouldn't naturally gather to the entrance, like they did in the valley. The problem was, they naturally gathered at a low point below the entrance...by the stairs of my only way down. Three spiders and two creepers. Fortunately, I remembered it was Minecraft, and I could dig another exit! Unfortunately, I quickly learned why you should never dig up.

In general, I act like a little girl with regards to monsters in Minecraft. I'm so scared whenever I enter a cave. I can only plant a few torches before I have to rush back to safety for a little while, so I explore caves in this slow-but-safe cycle of advancing and retreating. It's weird, because it's not this is my first video game. I think it's a combination of three things: the first person perspective, which increases the odds of just barely seeing an enemy out of the corner of your eye OH SHIT; the knowledge that the caves are randomly generated, and aren't neatly planned like a movie set; and my early underestimation of the character's health — at first I thought creepers were like instant death if they got you. All of these things combine to make exploring in caves an odd thrill, even though nobody would say Minecraft is realistic. I haven't been this "into" a game in a long time.